


Practical Education

by Penknife



Category: Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Childhood, Gen, Post-Solo: A Star Wars Story, Pre-Solo: A Star Wars Story, Some Canon Stolen From Star Wars Legends (We Recycle Here)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 18:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18923002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: Four times Han definitely didn’t need anybody’s help, and one time maybe he did.





	Practical Education

Han started working for the White Worms a long time ago. It doesn’t matter how long, or how that started. Bad things happened to everybody, and no one wants to think about that, except the littlest kids who haven’t learned yet that crying gets them nowhere and that no one is going to take care of them anymore. 

Han keeps an eye on them, some, because little kids haven’t got any sense. Rika just won’t learn that every time she brings food back with her, it’s going to get taken away, because she is a scrawny little rat whose arm is easy to twist behind her back. 

“I’m hungry,” she complains, and, sure, their last meal wasn’t much and their next meal isn’t for a long time, but there’s no point in whining. 

“Shut your mouth, kid,” he says. “Find something to eat while we’re out this time, and don’t try to take it home with you.” He knows that means she’s going to try to steal candy, and he’s not sure that’s what a kid her age ought to live on, even if she doesn’t get caught. “C’mere, I’ll show you something.” 

She follows him trustingly, because she really doesn’t have any sense, but he’s actually not going to hurt her. He shows her where they can rummage around in back of a loading dock and haul out empty metal cans and a couple of plastic pallets. The recyclers won’t pay enough to make it worth their time, but Han has a better idea. 

He hauls the stuff down several alleys to a food stand where he can already smell the spicy soup, mostly local spices but put together in a way that smells like nothing else. Rika is dragging a pallet as big as she is, and she freezes when she sees the big Wookie who runs the place. 

“Don’t be a baby,” Han says. “Hey, Dewlanna, I brought you some stuff.” 

It’s too early for there to be many customers, so she comes over right away, looking the junk over and then nodding for him to stash it in the tiny back room behind the stand. She growls, and Rika flinches again. 

“She says she’ll take it,” Han says. He’s gotten to understand Dewlanna pretty well; he’s good with languages. Apparently she has some kind of deal to trade stuff like this for the wilting and bruised vegetables she manages to turn into food to sell. Everybody’s running some kind of hustle around here. That’s how people get by. 

Dewlanna puts a bowl of soup on the counter, and Han nods to the kid to sit down and eat. She doesn’t have to be asked twice, tipping up the bowl greedily. Dewlanna puts down a second bowl, but Han knows what he brought her isn’t worth that much. 

She jerks her head for him to sit. He can owe her, she growls. He’d say no to most people, because you never know what they’re going to decide you owe them, but Dewlanna’s all right. He eats his soup with a spoon, scraping it around the bottom of the bowl to get the scraps. When he’s finished, he’s warmer. 

“All right, move, kid,” he says. “You know what they want.” 

Rika nods. “Come back with my pockets full,” she says. 

“Full of stuff that’s worth credits. Not candy.” 

“I get it,” she says, and slips away down the street. Nobody gives her a second glance, which is good for a pickpocket. Han is going to be too old soon to be completely ignored that way, but he’s got other skills. It’s a good day for boosting a speeder, a nice one, and maybe he’ll take it for a ride before he sells it. 

When he gets a little older, Han isn’t sure the junk he traded was ever actually worth the food he got in return. Wookies are smart in a lot of ways, but they aren’t always good with money. But it’s not like he was ever trying to cheat her, so he figures it’s probably all right. 

***** 

It’s a while before Han can swipe a broken datapad out of a junk stall and manage to keep it when he gets back to the White Worms’ lair. It helps that the thing looks like junk, old and boxy and dented. 

“Holding out, Han?” Adder twists his arm behind his back and holds up the datapad to look at it. “Maybe I should tell Moloch you’re shorting him.” Moloch is across the room hassling someone else, his claws clacking. 

“It’s trash,” Han says. “I’m going to take it apart, I want the pieces.” 

“Fine,” Adder says finally, and gives him a shove that nearly knocks him off his feet. Han snatches the datapad back and finds a hiding place to work on it. 

He’s good at fixing things, and this thing is long out of date, but it’s a lot like the one that— 

Han doesn’t think about things he used to have, a long time ago when he was a little kid. He works on figuring out what’s wrong with the datapad instead, and finally gets it up and running. 

It’s blank, of course, its contents wiped, and he doesn’t have any discs. He can’t explain to himself why this matters, but he doesn’t try to answer questions like that. Instead he hustles to make his quota for the day early and then asks around until someone can tell him where the Coronet City library is. 

For some reason he was expecting something smaller, full of bright colors and shabby shelves and some plastic printed books set out low enough for even a very little kid to reach. This is a big metal building with weapons detectors out front and signs that say NO SLEEPING IN THE LIBRARY. 

Lady Proxima doesn’t like her kids carrying weapons. It makes it harder to play innocent if they get caught. Han strolls in like he comes here all the time, but there aren’t any open shelves here. There are big public readers and machines that spit out reader discs and some really uncomfortable-looking chairs. He tries one of the readers, and it asks for an identification disc. 

A droid clanks its way toward him, and he looks around to see if he can spot any human staff. Droids are hard to talk into things, and they care a lot about rules. “Terminal access is for patrons only,” the droid says in a snooty voice. 

“I don’t know what a patron is,” Han says. He does, but he’s stalling. 

“Please exit the library before I am forced to call security.” The droid reaches for Han’s shoulder, and he dodges its metal grip. 

“Hang on, just—” 

“Let me handle this, CeeFive,” a woman says, and the droid stomps disapprovingly away. She’s old and kind of stern-looking, but she’s better than the droid. 

“I have a library identification disc,” Han says, “I just don’t have it with me. I left it at home.” 

“If you’ll show me your personal identification, I can look it up,” the woman says. 

Han makes a show of patting himself down. “I must have left that at home too. I was in a hurry this morning—” 

“To get to school on time?” the woman asks dryly. 

“That’s right. But I need a book for this school thing, so I came all the way across town. Can you just make an exception this one time?” He tries his best innocent look on her. 

“I’m afraid I can’t let you use the library without identification,” the woman says finally. He can’t figure out her expression. “But most of our collection is available to download from any public terminal. All you need is a library identification disc, like mine.” She shows him her own disc, like he’s too young to understand what she’s saying, and then puts it down distractedly on the arm of a chair. “Just a moment, young man. CeeFive, where are you putting those?” 

Honest citizens just don’t know how to take care of themselves. Han feels a little bad about slipping the library disc into his pocket, because she helped him, but he figures she can get another one easily enough. He darts out the front doors and doesn’t relax until he’s blocks away and sure that the security droids won’t pursue him into the street. 

He takes the disc to Slice when he gets back to the lair, because he knows better than to stick a stolen data disc straight into a public computer terminal. 

“You want me to scrub a library disc?” Slice says, looking at him over the rim of his thick goggles like this isn’t perfectly reasonable. Slice is a skinny kid younger than Han who can do pretty much anything with computers. The smarter kids don’t rough him up much even though he’s no good in a fight, because a good slicer can solve a lot of problems. 

“It’s stolen,” Han says. 

“I get that. Why do you want it?” Slice’s fingers are already moving over the datapad’s screen, pulling up scrolling lines of code instead of the regular screens. 

He’s had time to come up with the lie he’ll use if Lady Proxima finds out what he’s doing. “I want the technical specifications for the new speeders. I don’t want to be surprised by any security they’ve got on them.” 

Slice hands him the library disc. “Whatever.” 

Han isn’t sure whether being good with computers makes Slice safer from the White Worms or means he’s likely to be sold as more trouble than he’s worth. It probably doesn’t matter. He doesn’t think Slice could stay away from tech any more than he can stay away from things that go fast. 

It’s several days before he can get to a public terminal and slip the library disc in. He’s braced for alarms to sound—just because Slice is useful doesn’t mean Han trusts him—but instead he just gets a menu of books. He wants to download everything, but that’s going to take time he doesn’t have, so he just clicks a bunch of stuff like he’s shoving candy into his pockets, and then yanks the disc out and hurries away. 

Later he flips through what he’s gotten away with, some books about speeders, some adventure novels—he recognizes a title he’s read before and loads it up. He’s not sure why it’s such a surprise to start reading and find that it’s all still _there_ —Val Raiden and his scoutship and the planet with its mysterious singing gems, somewhere far away from this rusted-out warehouse with its damp and its grime and the noise of clanking metal and a distant scuffle that trails off into some little kid’s wails. 

He’s getting pretty good at conning honest citizens, Han thinks. Maybe they’ll wise up one of these days. 

***** 

Lady Proxima keeps an old teaching droid for the littlest kids, because they’re not useful if they can’t read street signs or add and subtract well enough to avoid being cheated. Han could already read and do basic math when he joined, so he escaped being educated. Their makeshift classroom is an old storage closet with too little ventilation and mold growing on the walls, and no one spends much time in there with ZeeNine if they can help it. 

That makes it a place where Han can hide out for a little while without anyone finding him, even Qi’ra. He’s usually glad for Qi’ra to find him, but he doesn’t want to explain that he’s trying to figure something out. 

He wants to be a pilot, and he’s not worried about the hands-on piloting. He’s never met anything yet that he can’t ride, drive, or fly. But getting from system to system takes math, if you don’t want to be entirely dependent on an astromech droid. Han has always been good at working out figures in his head, and he’s found a book on astrogation. He’s just not sure he understands any of it. 

There is a voice in his head that says that he ought to be able to get this, and another voice in his head that he likes less that says that there’s a reason that stupid scrumrats don’t become pilots. Understanding profit and percentages is not helping make any sense of why the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of— 

“… the semi-major axis of its orbit,” he snarls. “What does that even _mean_?” 

“The semi-major axis is the long axis of the ellipse formed by the planet’s orbit around the sun,” ZeeNine says abruptly, and Han jumps and swears under his breath. He assumed the droid was shut down, but its eyes are glowing blue and its torso is twisting to consider Han. Lady Proxima took its legs off a long time ago, so she probably doesn’t worry that it’s going to escape. 

Han narrows his eyes at ZeeNine. “You understand this stuff?” 

“I am programmed to teach mathematics and physics to a university level,” the droid says primly. 

Han flips through screens in the frustrating book. “There’s a whole chapter in this on trigonometry. What is trigonometry?” 

“The branch of mathematics dealing with the relations of the sides and angles of triangles.” 

“What does that have to do with astrogation?” 

“It would be best to cover this material in a logical sequence,” ZeeNine says. 

“Yes. Maybe.” Han thinks fast. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up, but the last thing he wants is for Lady Proxima to hear that he’s trying to learn about starship piloting. If he’d like to keep all his own limbs attached, he’d better be careful. “If I read you the first chapter, can you explain it so that it makes sense?” 

“That is literally my function as a sentient being,” ZeeNine says, his eyes lighting more brightly. 

“Good. Great. Just keep your voice down.” 

They don’t get through the first chapter, because ZeeNine keeps stopping to explain things that apparently you’re supposed to have learned already when you’re Han’s age. He’s about ready to give this up as a bad idea, but he hates to admit defeat. It’s going to take time, though, and that means he needs to ensure ZeeNine’s cooperation. 

“Lady Proxima wouldn’t like it if she knew you were teaching me,” Han says. 

“That is very likely true,” ZeeNine acknowledges. 

“So if you want to keep all the parts you’ve got left, you’d better keep your mouth shut and do what I tell you. When I come back, you’re going to explain the rest of chapter one.” 

“Clearly I have no choice but to comply with your threat.” ZeeNine doesn’t sound scared, but then he’s just a droid, and probably isn’t programmed for a lot of complicated emotions. Still, he probably has enough of a sense of self-preservation not to want to wind up on the garbage heap. 

Han doesn’t want to wind up there either, but that’s why he’s getting out, and taking Qi’ra with him. He’s smart enough to know they need to find a way to leave this place behind. 

***** 

The basic training facility on Carida is intimidatingly a lot of things—bright, clean, echoingly huge, full of Imperials in Imperial uniforms—but at the end of the day, it’s run by honest citizens, and Han can con honest citizens, if he can just get someone to listen long enough. 

“There’s a problem with my paperwork,” he says for the hundredth time. “And I’m running out of time to sort it out before I’m shipped out to infantry training, and I’m not supposed to be infantry.” 

“This says you’re only qualified for infantry,” the bored Imperial behind the desk says. 

“I’m supposed to be a pilot,” Han says. He can’t afford to sound less than entirely confident, but he’s starting to feel less than entirely confident. He’s never dealt with people before who were this concerned with following rules. And he knows what the rules say, but he just can’t get shipped offworld, not when the Academy’s pilot training program is right here, not when he’s _so close_ — 

“What seems to be the problem?” a man says, and at least he’s looking at Han and not at the test results in his hand. 

“I’m dealing with it, Captain,” the clerk says. 

“There’s a problem with my paperwork, I just need a moment of your time,” Han says. There’s an expectant pause, the sort that back on Corellia would mean money changing hands, but he hasn’t got any, and he’s not sure there’s anything else he’s willing to trade. “That’s all.” There’s another expectant pause. “Sir?” he ventures. 

The man’s mouth twitches. “You have it. The moment of my time,” he prompts when Han hesitates. 

“I’ve passed all the tests for pilot training. I’ve got all the results right here.” The physical and the hands-on simulator tests were easy, and Han knows he passed them with flying colors. The written tests made him sweat, but the mathematics weren’t anything he hadn’t seen before, and the comprehension questions weren’t that bad. His score on the galactic history test wasn’t great, but it’s apparently good enough for pilot training. It’s not like he’s planning to be a diplomat. 

“Hmm,” the officer says, which Han chooses to take as an encouraging noise. 

“The problem is that I’m supposed to submit my educational records—they can waive that for some backwater planets apparently, but not for Corellia. Only, see, there was an accident at the local datacenter—” 

“An accident.” 

Han can’t tell if the man is buying this or not, but there’s nothing he can do but forge ahead. “It caught fire, they lost a bunch of data that wasn’t properly backed up, and all my educational records are gone. I mean, obviously I’ve got an education, or I couldn’t pass the tests, right? So there has to be some way to work around this.” He’s apparently not a fast learner, because it takes him a moment to add, “Sir.” 

The officer looks him up and down, and Han tells himself he is not waiting to find out if the man will help him, because he’s never needed anybody’s help. He’s just waiting to find out if his con has worked. It has to work. 

“Exemption granted due to datacenter fire,” the officer says, although not necessarily in a tone that suggests he’s bought the story completely. He makes the note on Han’s paperwork, though, and then glances through it again. “This says that based on your test scores you’re recommended for TIE pilot training.” 

“Yes, sir,” Han says, trying not to look triumphant. 

“Do you know what the average life expectancy of a TIE fighter pilot is, son?” 

“I’m not average.” He is going to earn every bit of the respect that goes with the uniform. When he goes back to Corellia to get Qi’ra, it won’t be as a scrumrat from the streets of Coronet City. He’s leaving that behind right here. 

“I expect not,” the officer says. “Good luck, Cadet.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Han says. “You won’t be sorry.” 

He probably is sorry, if he ever hears about Han’s abrupt exit from the Imperial Navy. That’s the trouble with putting yourself out for other people, though. It never ends well. 

He supposes honest citizens never will learn. 

***** 

Han has always been good with languages. Most of the time he just lets them roll off him until the sounds start making sense. He’s really working at learning Shyriiwook, though, because while Chewie can understand him perfectly well, that’s not the same as conversation. 

He knows the basics, but he’s having to actively work to get shades of meaning—it helps that body language conveys a lot, but in addition to knowing that he’s a pain in the ass, he wants to know why he’s a pain in the ass—and words that he didn’t have any use for when he was a kid whose main interests were food, landspeeders, and crime. It helps some when he gets straight that a bunch of the technical terms sound weirdly put together because they’re actually in another Wookie language, one that’s apparently better for talking about engineering. It would be nice if Chewie didn’t switch between the two mid-sentence, but he’s starting to understand statements like [ _What are you trying to do, kill me, that’s the_ ACTIVE POWER CONDUIT.] 

He’s also trying to learn Huttese, because dealing with people who speak a language he doesn’t understand is not a good position to be in. He knows a little Huttese from Corellia, mostly things like “That’s too expensive” and “Back off, buster.” That’s a start, but getting from there to actually understanding whether someone’s making threats about his immediate future or recapping what happened before he came onto the scene isn’t easy. 

Trying to learn both languages at the same time feels like he’s spraining his brain. When he isn’t paying close attention, sounds that he should understand blur together into noise, and then Chewie starts grumbling and waving the wrong tool he’s handed him in his face and wanting to know whether he was listening the first time. 

“Listen, pal, I never claimed to be a quick study,” he snarls back. There’s a pause, and then Chewie gets out of his face, quieting down the way he does when one of them’s really pissed the other one off. Han wishes he were sure which of them is supposed to apologize. 

Chewie breaks the silence by offering the opinion that Han actually isn’t bad at learning languages. 

“I’m trying. I’m only getting it this fast because you’re helping me.” It’s probably clear from the tone of his voice how he feels about needing help. 

The answer contains a frustrating number of pronouns, and it takes him a minute to work it out. “You’re not doing it to help me, you’re doing it because you want me to understand what you’re saying.” He shrugs. “That’s what I want, too. So maybe we’re helping each other.” 

Chewie inclines his head as if that should be obvious. 

“I don’t like needing help,” Han says, although he’s becoming aware that saying that in Shyriiwook is closer to saying _I like being alone_ , and he doesn’t, to be entirely honest, like being alone. “I never got much.” 

Chewie expresses the opinion that Han has done well with what he had to work with. This is the kind of statement that it’s easy to make in Shyriiwook, and which Han has no idea what to do with, so he just lets it lie there. He hands Chewie the hydrospanner instead, which was what he apparently wanted in the first place. 

“Thanks, though,” he mutters under his breath, because Chewie has been helping him, and it probably ought to be said; maybe that’s one thing he’s starting to learn.


End file.
